Australian Golf Big Golf, Part I: Peninsula Mornington

Within hours of touch down Melburn, AustraliaFor a journey of the explosion buddies, I would still not check if the toilets really blush in the opposite direction in the southern hemisphere. But I would verify another law of physics: the slices rotate in the same thing as they do again at home.

It was an afternoon kissed by the sun, in the middle of the week, in mid -March, and I will simply be lost be devastating for many reasons, not all related to your result. Shortly before our start, a club representative had treated us in a pre-randy speech worthy of Steve Irwin, showing us excited about the course and poisonous snakes inhabiting it.

“If one of them takes you,” he said, getting bored. “You have about an hour.”

Maybe this calculated for my shaky game. Of course, Jet Lag should not be blamed.

In our 16-hour flight from Los Angeles, my-my-colleagues, James and Sean-and I was improved in the Qantas business class, where the places were flat, pajamas provided and time passed into a relative flash. We arrived the next morning at the end of the world, we rested and ready to hit the land running, sean, most capable of our fourth driving on the wrong side of the road, piloting the car for rent.

Like the most famous courses of the Melbourne area- RoyalKingston Heath and Victoria – Kingswood Peninsula is part of Sand strip And it carries the distinctive features of the outbreaks in the region, with strong, fast bunkers and steep face bunkers with sharp edges. But the club sits farther in the south than its sisters at the gate to the Mornington Peninsula, a boot -shaped extension under Melbourne that doubles as a draw for nearby city players, surfors and residents in the weekend departures.

“Sort it’s a kind like what Long Island is with Manhattan,” Mike Clayton, well -known Golf and Local Melbourne course architect, told me.

As we motivated it in the south, however, admiring vineyards and breast glances, other comparisons were taken into mind: the Mornington Peninsula was northern California, minus blockages; It was Scotland with the most beautiful weather and the best wine.

The analogies aside was not a bold place to start our 10-day escape.

The Kingswood Peninsula made a first susceptible stop for its location, only less than an hour by car from the airport, but also for its lecturer. Formed by a union of two clubs (peninsula and kingswood) with roots that arrived in recent years from Clayton’s Aussie quartet, the US Open Geoff Ogilvy, Mike Cocking and Ashley Mead.

Of the two appearances, the south is the longest, the most enjoyable and – based on the Course ratings – harder, but the north offers a more loyal presentation for Sandbelt golf in the style and scale of its sandy waste and bunkers as well as its Heathland vegetation. To say it is easier than the south does not mean that it is timid for strategic requirements.

As our group learned quickly, being out of position brings all sorts of non-reputilian problems to the highlight (it is worth noting that snakes, as our friend Aussie made it clear in his pre-randy conversation, want even less Do with us than we do with them; The real issue is angles. The northern course is about them. A well -set car opens up a world of opportunities, while a wrong ball, even if you find the right way, leaves you to play protection in your approach.

Despite the blow, the target intended taking on the flag is not often the wise choice. In Sandbelt’s quintesential fashion, the northern course is a fiery feast of the game on Earth, which is less an arrow game than is a mogul run. And one of the great pleasures to play, is the prediction of Hops and Role and the attempt to execute accordingly. Some coincidences apply, of course. Green friction can work in both ways.

This was visible throughout our round, but nowhere more than in the PAR-5 17 hole, where the wandering runner of a bypass and skirting before coming to an ideal place, about 70 yards from the pin. Good holidays are just good if you take advantage of them, and the other goal of Darren was pro-modern, a perfect children’s wedge that landed on a ridge on the right of green, then wrapped and curly, as if GPS- Guided, in a left cup for Eagle-A moment of pump pump made it even more euphoric than it was filmed by a drone that Darren had set up moving behind the hole.

This was also a focus of our round conversations after the round. With the sun plunging down on the Bay of Port Phillip, we made the scenic machine through the vineyard the vineyard on PT. Leo Estate, one of the many bright lights in a constellation of the area of ​​the area, where we sat for a farm on the table.

The mild and mild climate of the Mornington Peninsula is similar to that of the Sonoma circuit, and the same varieties of grapes – including Pinot Noir and Chardonnay – bloom on both premises. The kitchen, supported by season and local, is also remembering California’s cooking. On a feast of grilled lamb and roasted vegetables in PT. Leo’s glass wall restaurant, we looked at a modern sculpture garden, resting from the breast, while resetting the day in the language of soft conversation in which all players are running. Then we made our way to our accommodations and prepared to do it again.

Our place of residence was the connections of Moonah, and our place of play was the open course, one of the two 18-tolerants of the resort. True to her name, it was created by five-time Championship Winner Peter Thomson (Tom Watson of Australia), as a lid type in the connections in which he had so much success. One of the longest appearances in the country, the open course, which extends more than 7,400 yards and has twice received Australian Open, is filled with wrapped pot bunkers, very hidden, similar to connections, in folding Fairways. And although it is not difficult in the water, like most open Rota places, it plays under the influence of coastal winds, which adds to both the challenge and in entertainment. None of us broke 80, but we all had an explosion.

Where fun can take us else was another issue. The peninsula is loaded with so many courses, we were forced to choose and choose within the two days we would share for this part of our tour. After some debates, we chose the National Golf Club, a luxurious withdrawal where we faced another choice because the national team has four courses, including the models of Greg Norman and Tom Doak.

Without any way to go wrong, we tried to go with the old course, a last 1980 appearance Robert Trent Jones Jr. that many architecture nests consider one of the best efforts of his long career. Routing is a yellow coaster, built on a canvas of dunes and tea trees, with staggering views on straight roads that are more forgiving than they seem to be out. Compared to the two rounds we would already play, this was a more targeted test, with lush ground and more forced trucks, and the acceleration of adrenaline I made background shoots.

He sought our attention from the high points on the course, and grabbed it completely in the 7th hole, a par 3 on a canyon in a green placed in a bluff with a blue infinity lies behind it. After a solid high game and a routine two strokes, Sean stood at the green edge, taking on the Vista postcard, and half jokingly suggested that we were where we were for the rest of the day.

It was not a bad idea, but it was good that we continued to continue. After 36 hours and nearly three rounds, we will not yet encounter a snake in Australia. But in the next hole, one uphill 5, we had our first encounter with a different native species: a kangaroo body, sleepy and grazing the steep green astrid, as is upset by us, as we were excited by them.

Distinguished, I with three jackets. Another bogie and another nugget for memory banks, with more to come. Two days down, we still had eight to get inside and around Melbourne, where my game looked very similar to what was at home, but our Golf – our group had already realized – it was different from everything else.

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